In Place of Private Worship
Madeleine Dale
Water-beaded, sunwrecked, I don’t dwell
on the cataclysm
which created this place – forgotten notch
between sharp sheets of stone, thrown
up at primeval angles, dark
with drinkwater and fern. This cove,
made for candles and low
fallen things. You are not one of those
that is to be celebrated, no ceremony
made from the flight of your hands
over my skin. Eggshell pale
in the rock shade, you look like something
I have thieved, a cuckoo’s clutch
ready to break in murderous triumph.
Here, I unstring you, note
by note, until we are a tamed symphony,
no louder than the fall of water. Not
all collapse is ruin. If bedrock
unhitched her bonds and was still left
this meadowsweet hollow,
what else might be remade between us? I
could undo all and carve a place
for my hands flush on your white abdomen.
I hook a thumb inside
your mouth, and imagine what I would find
if I broke you open; what quiet vales
are yet waiting in the disaster of your flesh.
Cauld